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Wafflecopper posted:Thanks guys. One more trade question: What should I be doing with my light ships? When I set them to boost trade or whatever the option's called and get the list of where to send them, I mouseover each one and it looks like I get the most out of just sending them to my home node. Is there any more to it than what's indicated in the tooltip? It seems a bit simple. Might I make more sending them to a node I'm steering from if I don't have much strength there for example? You should be putting your trade ships in your home node if control over the trade in it is contested. Otherwise, they are much better off supporting your merchants that are pulling trade towards your home node instead. Example: You are playing Yemen and your home node is the Gulf of Aden. Aden pulls in trade from Persia and India, which pull trade from further in and so on. Trade flows from the Gulf of Aden west to Alexandria, north to Hormuz, and south to Zanzibar. Aden is a crossroad that can potentially be a very rich node, but to do that it has to bring trade in from India, and to keep trade from flowing out. Trade will flow out if countries like the Mamluks or Persia try to pull trade from Aden into their nodes, and other countries collecting in Aden will additionally be competing with you to collect whatever part of the trade pie is left over. If any significant part of the trade in your primary node is contested like that, say 40% or more, it is very much worth it to put your trade ships in there to both enlarge the trade pie that remains in the node as well as your share of it. But if your share of the node is overwhelming it's definitely much more worth it to try enlargening it but putting your trade fleets in India and pulling trade to Aden from there, unless you somehow have more overwhelming control over those than over Aden itself, but even then there's more trade to pull your way, by getting the trade from Belgan to west India so it can flow to Aden, from Malacca to Bengal, from China to Malacca and so on. It might still be worth it to put trade fleets in your home node even if you have an overwhelming share of it, if the rest of it is all being pulled out of the node instead of being collected there, but long-term your solution to other countries stealing trade value from your home node should be to fight them, sink their fleets, and take their important trade provinces than having a trade fleet permanently ear-marked to giving you extra power in your home node.
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Oct 11, 2015 14:41
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I am currently playing a custom nations / random nations game as Not - Portugal where I have run into a frustrating situation - I am completely unable to get any land on the Ivory Coast, every province is already inhabited so there is no colonisation possible and while there are several large sub Saharan powers none of them quite hits twenty percent of the total trade power in the node to allow me to start a trade conflict. The islands right off the coast are also already inhabited and so while I did leapfrog over them to get the Cape the only way I can pull trade power from the east on to the Sevilla node is to keep literally a hundred light ships patrolling the node. Are there any real options for getting to attack the natives without it being a no CB war or completing the entire Expansion ideas group? I suppose Religious might be another option but either would be an Admin group and would take quite some time.
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Oct 11, 2015 15:02
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Pellisworth posted:Also, a little bit of an update on Venice -> Byzantium, it's going much better second time around. You can get the two RT bonuses while Greek and Orthodox, as long as you're still Venice, right?
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Oct 11, 2015 15:09
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Bold Robot posted:You can get the two RT bonuses while Greek and Orthodox, as long as you're still Venice, right? The only requirement for the events to fire is that your tag is still "VEN/Venice"
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Oct 11, 2015 15:16
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Tuscany to Italy is delightful, unjustified demands bonus with the correct ideas mean this : Portugal, Spain, and Austria were absorbed in a couple wars, only living on in overseas / african colonies anymore. France is a 2 province vassal just to spite them. I have an army forcelimit of 350k men to the ottoman's 240k forcelimit, the largest fleet in the world, and next in line are Bohemia and Burgundy, historical allies of mine but sorry guys, I'm disbanding the HRE and making the Italian European Empire whether you like it or not. Just hope I can make it in time seen as there's less than 70 years left.
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Oct 11, 2015 15:58
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Patrat posted:I am currently playing a custom nations / random nations game as Not - Portugal where I have run into a frustrating situation - I am completely unable to get any land on the Ivory Coast, every province is already inhabited so there is no colonisation possible and while there are several large sub Saharan powers none of them quite hits twenty percent of the total trade power in the node to allow me to start a trade conflict. The islands right off the coast are also already inhabited and so while I did leapfrog over them to get the Cape the only way I can pull trade power from the east on to the Sevilla node is to keep literally a hundred light ships patrolling the node. Just No-CB it, or attack one of the European states who'd likely be easier to get a CB on. Don't even think about an idea group to do it, one No-CB war is cheaper than any idea.
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Oct 11, 2015 16:07
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Just No-CB it, or attack one of the European states who'd likely be easier to get a CB on. Don't even think about an idea group to do it, one No-CB war is cheaper than any idea. Other obvious option is to wait for the imperialism CB.
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Oct 11, 2015 16:46
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Just won my first war as Byzantium. It took a couple of restarts and I had to wait until 1465 before the Ottos moved their armies onto the right side of the strait. but the actual fighting wasn't that bad. I got Poland onboard without a dip rep advisor by getting my fleet strength up high enough (1 carrack, 22 galleys mothballed and 2 active barques). Poland/Lithuania absolutely curbstomped Crimea. Meanwhile my fleet blocked the straight and the Ottoman's didn't loop around. They probably couldn't get military access through all the other nations there. Then it was just a matter of tediously sieging down all 3-4 forts on my side of the Bosporus. I didn't take the reclaim mission at the start because I wanted my cores first. I'm not seeing it now though. Did I screw myself over by not taking it because it's only available at the start or something? What are good ides for Byz? I usually go Humanist but I'm leaning towards Religious for my first idea because it will synergize better with Byz's true faith tolerance bonus and I need something to help deal with all the Sunni provinces I'm going to be expanding into.
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Oct 11, 2015 17:11
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LLSix posted:Just won my first war as Byzantium. It took a couple of restarts and I had to wait until 1465 before the Ottos moved their armies onto the right side of the strait. but the actual fighting wasn't that bad. I got Poland onboard without a dip rep advisor by getting my fleet strength up high enough (1 carrack, 22 galleys mothballed and 2 active barques). Poland/Lithuania absolutely curbstomped Crimea. Meanwhile my fleet blocked the straight and the Ottoman's didn't loop around. They probably couldn't get military access through all the other nations there. Then it was just a matter of tediously sieging down all 3-4 forts on my side of the Bosporus. I didn't take the reclaim mission at the start because I wanted my cores first. I'm not seeing it now though. Did I screw myself over by not taking it because it's only available at the start or something? I get building a carrack to boost your naval power diplo modifiers, but I think you reversed which you should mothball and which you should keep active and blocking the strait vis-a-vis the galleys you let rot in port. Religious Ideas are overkill as Byz, once you unlock your missionary boost national idea and have some patriarch authority the only provinces in the game that will take more than a few months are Roma and Mecca. You're already going to be getting capped on Tolerance so more wont help you likely. After Humanism the best set of ideas are Diplomatic/Influence and then either Admin or a mil idea (Defensive/Quality probably beat out Quantity here because you are going to have a crapton of military development from your Greek and Turkish provinces along with a manpower boost from Patriarch Authority and your NI's)
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Oct 11, 2015 17:19
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LLSix posted:Just won my first war as Byzantium. It took a couple of restarts and I had to wait until 1465 before the Ottos moved their armies onto the right side of the strait. but the actual fighting wasn't that bad. I got Poland onboard without a dip rep advisor by getting my fleet strength up high enough (1 carrack, 22 galleys mothballed and 2 active barques). Poland/Lithuania absolutely curbstomped Crimea. Meanwhile my fleet blocked the straight and the Ottoman's didn't loop around. They probably couldn't get military access through all the other nations there. Then it was just a matter of tediously sieging down all 3-4 forts on my side of the Bosporus. I didn't take the reclaim mission at the start because I wanted my cores first. I'm not seeing it now though. Did I screw myself over by not taking it because it's only available at the start or something? I like Admin for coring and mercs (since you're wealthy but manpower is a little iffy), +10% Goods Produced is simply the best economic modifier and I would argue it's actually better than the +10% tax and production efficiency in Economic (the main advantages of Econ being the inflation reduction, autonomy reduction, and cheaper development). Influence or if you can punch the Mamluks early enough, Exploration to colonize. Any of the standard military picks is good, Offensive Defensive Quality. Your troops kind of suck poo poo. Skip Humanist and Religious both imo. You get bonkers Missionary Strength from your NIs and Patriarch Authority, extra missionaries from conquering Jerusalem, Mecca, and Rome. Religion would be good for the CB but in terms of actual conversion you already have the best bonuses in the game for that. Here's a 1550 screenshot from my Venice -> Byzantium game. Ottomans take forever to finally knock out, you'll likely be demanding 100% warscore of provinces and still won't finish them until the late 1500s. All my territory is converted to Orthodox here, including all of Egypt and Mecca. Sorry, Islam. 
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Oct 11, 2015 17:21
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How'd you get access to the Mamluks? Did you have to snake all the way down the Ottoman coast or did you find a faster way to do it? Edit: I've got forts on the two Bosporus strait provinces but the Ottoman's are walking right through them without a care in the world. What the gently caress? LLSix fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Oct 11, 2015 |
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Oct 11, 2015 18:10
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Do they have territory on the far side? For some reason you're allowed to walk into a fort, and then leave into yours or a third country where you have military access, as if the enemy fort was never there. Makes the HRE forts pointless.
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Oct 11, 2015 19:04
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TorakFade posted:Tuscany to Italy is delightful, unjustified demands bonus with the correct ideas mean this : Why the hell are you going after the HRE? You need to smash and liberate your ancient lands from the grips of the Ottomans for MAXIMUM ROME.
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Oct 11, 2015 19:06
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LLSix posted:How'd you get access to the Mamluks? Did you have to snake all the way down the Ottoman coast or did you find a faster way to do it? The zone of control stuff is a little wonky, yeah  You start out with control of Crete, just fabricate a claim on one of the Mamluk provinces across from it. You don't actually want to conquer and core much Mamluk territory until you've done your culture and religion switching and otherwise built up some. After your first war with the Ottomans, look for an opportunity to attack the Mamluks ideally when they're at war with someone else. Your allies usually aren't interested in helping you with the Mamluks, so they can actually be a tougher fight than your first war with the Ottomans. Just grab two provinces to access the Red Sea, Ghazzah and Suez or Sinai, something like that. I also recommend taking one of Syria's cores, then releasing them as a vassal. For starters you just want the Red Sea access and Syria as a vassal, second war with the Mamluks you should be able to handle conquering more of Egypt and can cheaply stuff Syria full. Make sure to take Jerusalem for yourself. You can integrate Syria or leave them around to block you off from a land connection with Africa/Asia, making them all count as overseas for halved coring cost.
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Oct 11, 2015 19:20
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PittTheElder posted:Just No-CB it, or attack one of the European states who'd likely be easier to get a CB on. Don't even think about an idea group to do it, one No-CB war is cheaper than any idea. I though it would be that, unfortunately I have lucked out and am sitting at +3 stability so a no CB war is going to be tremendously painful there, no European powers are present in that part of Africa given that there were never any provinces to colonise. I suppose the other option would be to invade through Morocco and across the Sahara but I want nothing to do with Berber increased cost to core! Tangiers was bad enough.
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Oct 11, 2015 19:24
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A general rule of thumb with trade: send most light ships to the node closest to your home node that is significantly contested. Say you're Venice and your route is India > Gulf of Aden > Alexandria > Venice: you'll likely hold much of the Venice node and you can grab a lot of the Alexandrian one through successful landfall in Egypt, so you'd want to focus on Aden. This doesn't always hold if you can push so much trade from a 'higher' node that it outweighs an increased ratio frmo a 'lower' one, but it's a good starting point. It also doesn't hurt to spread your trade fleets across multiple nodes to balance things out, but if you do this you'll need local ports and probably to check 'return home at war' as they'll be small fleets and you'll be too busy to micromanage.
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Oct 11, 2015 19:43
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skasion posted:Don't trust those tooltips. Experiment and see what raises your trade income. That's right. I vaguely recall the tooltips were completely incorrect. So they never got around to patching that?
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Oct 11, 2015 20:00
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Don't listen to all these people telling you to use your light ships to protect trade like a wimp. Turn them into privateers and park them in a rich end node like Venice. Bonus points if you have rivals that collect in that node.
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Oct 11, 2015 20:10
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I just realised that the new culture change mechanics in the next DLC will add a whole new level of potential culture shift fuckery, as you will now be able to spread around a foreign culture to make it large enough to shift to  Probably of limited usefulness but there will be some dumb niche uses I'm sure and at the very least it will mean you might be able to save some admin points from not having to move capital (unless they see this coming and make it impossible for you to shift your own capital away from your culture)
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Oct 11, 2015 20:20
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mmkay posted:So I was playing as Ottomans for the first time and I pretty much ignored Europe after annexing Wien in 1538 (not having any wars except for one with the Knights). Some interesting bits I've gathered from the province logs: I'm also playing as the Ottomans right now, and we are at about the same period.  France inherited Castile in mine and since they are allied to Malacca and Pagarruyung, grabbing Indonesia has been a pain, massive wars that take way too long to grab a handful of provinces in the spice islands. The ting going on with Russia is totally outside of me, I haven't been messing around up there at all, Muscovy, Novgorod, and Astrakhan wound up in a stalemate where they were all about equal strength and they were unable to unite Russia, then Scandinavia, Lithuania, and Uzbek ate chunks of them  New World is pretty typical, except for France inheriting Castile so they have some colonial nations that are yellow not blue.  I had been hoping to inherit stuff too so I went Orthodox. I never was able to get a personal union going though. I'm aiming for the Silk Road achievement right now, probably 2 wars against Ming and one against Japan to complete that.
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Oct 11, 2015 21:55
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Remove +core cost ideas
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Oct 11, 2015 22:03
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Odd. I picked the Timurids with the goal of provoking their one zoroastrian province to rebel so that I could switch to it, but zoroastrian rebels simply will not appear. Even after I switching to Persian culture and sending an unfunded missionary to Yazd, it's still 'Persian separatists,' which doesn't even make sense anymore.
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Oct 11, 2015 22:11
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Average Bear posted:Remove +core cost ideas
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Oct 11, 2015 22:22
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Average Bear posted:Remove +core cost ideas 
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Oct 11, 2015 22:25
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Playing Venice/Byzantium and manpower is loving killing me. Just finishing up my second big war with the Ottomans and I'm going to kick them out of Europe. I'd like to start in on the Mamluks, but I'm in a deep manpower hole and can't afford more than like a 12 stack of mercs. Austria and Poland have been total bros but I'm not sure they'll be super useful against the Mamluks since there isn't a land connection to them yet. How are you guys handling this?
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Oct 11, 2015 22:27
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Bold Robot posted:Playing Venice/Byzantium and manpower is loving killing me. Just finishing up my second big war with the Ottomans and I'm going to kick them out of Europe. I'd like to start in on the Mamluks, but I'm in a deep manpower hole and can't afford more than like a 12 stack of mercs. Austria and Poland have been total bros but I'm not sure they'll be super useful against the Mamluks since there isn't a land connection to them yet. How are you guys handling this? Yeah I posted as much, I had a similar experience. Austria and Poland probably won't come help you against Mamluks, you miiiiight be able to get QQ or someone to come with. You can't colonize until you have dip tech 7 and the first three Exploration ideas, nothing is in range until then. You probably don't want to conquer large chunks of the Mamluks as the lack of a land connection and your inability to convert them means they aren't giving you much value and will be really rebellious (and you're already out of manpower). Mamluks tend to fall behind in tech a lot more easily than the Ottomans, so I would say just work toward getting culture and religion switched, stabilizing yourself, getting ready for your next war with the Ottos and hit Mamluks when opportunity arises. You're going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower until well after you form Byzantium, learn to love mercs
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Oct 11, 2015 22:36
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If you are likely to end up making a lot more money if you win the war? Just keep taking out loans to fund a poo poo ton of mercenary infantry then take out more loans to pay to reinforce them. Consolidate all of your infantry regiments first though and build up a small manpower reserve to keep your cavalry and cannons working given you never want those as mercs, but most of your casualties will be infantry anyway.
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Oct 11, 2015 22:38
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Also your vassals can contribute quite a bit to a fight against the Mamluks. They aren't nearly as huge and scary as the Ottomans, the difficulty is your European allies aren't likely to help out so you're looking at an amphibious assault on a similar strength enemy plus you're chronically starved for manpower. If you can field about 20k between yourself and vassals that should be enough. Catch them in another war or bring an ally and you're fine. I wouldn't take more than enough to get access to the Red Sea, a Syrian core to release them, and maybe Alexandria for the trade bonus. Don't get too greedy while your religious unity and manpower are trash.
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Oct 11, 2015 22:48
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How do I get Orthodox rebels to show up? I've got a missionary parked in one of my Orthodox provinces at zero maintenance. Anything else I can do? If it matters, it's 1483, I've got all of the Ottomans' European provinces, I've culture shifted to Greek, and I've got well over 50% Orthodox provinces.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:03
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Obliterati posted:A general rule of thumb with trade: send most light ships to the node closest to your home node that is significantly contested. Say you're Venice and your route is India > Gulf of Aden > Alexandria > Venice: you'll likely hold much of the Venice node and you can grab a lot of the Alexandrian one through successful landfall in Egypt, so you'd want to focus on Aden. This doesn't always hold if you can push so much trade from a 'higher' node that it outweighs an increased ratio frmo a 'lower' one, but it's a good starting point. Related to this, what's the difference between privateering/protecting trade? The way I'm reading it, it sounds like protecting trade just boosts your own power on that node, while privateering reduces the power of other nations on that node and gives it to you, for a bigger net effect (but is also countered by people pirate hunting, while trade protection can't be countered directly). Is that right at all?
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Oct 12, 2015 00:14
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Related to this, what's the difference between privateering/protecting trade? The way I'm reading it, it sounds like protecting trade just boosts your own power on that node, while privateering reduces the power of other nations on that node and gives it to you, for a bigger net effect (but is also countered by people pirate hunting, while trade protection can't be countered directly). Unless it's been changed recently, privateering doesn't give you any trade power, but it does give you a little bit of money from the trade power you're undercutting. It can also intercept gold fleets and steal portions of the gold they're bringing back home.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:19
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Bold Robot posted:How do I get Orthodox rebels to show up? I've got a missionary parked in one of my Orthodox provinces at zero maintenance. Anything else I can do? If it matters, it's 1483, I've got all of the Ottomans' European provinces, I've culture shifted to Greek, and I've got well over 50% Orthodox provinces. Naxos is pretty good for this if you integrated them peacefully. Just check each of your Orthodox provinces until you find one that has no nationalism or separatism in it, make sure that the rebel tag shows Orthodox rebels, park a missionary there with 0 maintenance, decrease autonomy, and as soon as they show up in the rebels list accept their demands to switch your state religion. It might take a while, especially if a possible location has revolted recently, so settle back in for the wait. edit: jsut realized that you said most of my steps, but the key is a province with no other revolt reason in it. Just about anything that you took in conquest won't work.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:45
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YF-23 posted:Unless it's been changed recently, privateering doesn't give you any trade power, but it does give you a little bit of money from the trade power you're undercutting. It can also intercept gold fleets and steal portions of the gold they're bringing back home. Some exceedingly successful privateering of treasure fleets by France in my last game periodically made them spike to the top income country in the world.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:48
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Average Bear posted:Remove +core cost ideas The best part is, there's even a policy for it. I guess it's some MP thing or so, where you activate it to spite someone after losing a war?
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Oct 12, 2015 08:22
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Tahirovic posted:The best part is, there's even a policy for it. I guess it's some MP thing or so, where you activate it to spite someone after losing a war? Never seen it used - hell, we're removing all of those in EG. I always assumed the AI factored it into its choices of targets?
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Oct 12, 2015 08:34
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Tahirovic posted:The best part is, there's even a policy for it. I guess it's some MP thing or so, where you activate it to spite someone after losing a war? It is a legit strategy to cut your losses short if you ever find yourself on the losing side of a war.
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Oct 12, 2015 08:36
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+Coring cost in an awful mechanic. It doesn't do anything unless you've already lost. Not "Oh, it might help you not lose" but straight up does nothing until you've lost, and then, its only purpose is to spite whomever won. In most large multiplayer games I've seen, if someone grab it, they'll get murdered asap by all their neighbors as no one wants them to spread their toxic cores. It's completely awful and has no redeeming value outside of making certain areas of the map less attractive to expand into in single player.
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Oct 12, 2015 09:20
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It gets really funny with small nations too, Wallachia didn't have anything to spend their points on but development, when I annexed them it would have been 300+ admin for each of their two provinces, that is as Russia with admin ideas. I quickly released them as vassal, gonna diplo annex those fuckers.
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Oct 12, 2015 09:53
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Related to this, what's the difference between privateering/protecting trade? The way I'm reading it, it sounds like protecting trade just boosts your own power on that node, while privateering reduces the power of other nations on that node and gives it to you, for a bigger net effect (but is also countered by people pirate hunting, while trade protection can't be countered directly). Protecting just increases your trade power, while privateering is completely different. Instead of increasing your trade power, it increases the trade power of the "pirate nation", which automatically collects in that node and then gives you 40% of what they collect. In a sense, it's like collecting in a node with a 60% efficiency penalty, without needing to use a merchant. Privateers also contribute 50% more trade power than normal trade fleets. Most importantly, you can get up to 30 power projection from privateering (10 for each rival).
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Oct 12, 2015 10:24
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This is still the best: Guess who'll be coring Africa, Arabia and India for <10 Admin per province.
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Oct 12, 2015 11:14
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